Personal Training in QLD

Personal Training in New Zealand

Core Strength – The Foundation of Injury Free Achievement*

Tuesday, 27 March 2018, By Christopher Jovcevski

Lower Back Pain? Shoulder Pain? Knee Pain? Hip Pain? I
personally used to suffer from all of these issues during my early
training days. I thought it was normal to feel pain while
exercising. No pain, no gain, right? Well I was dead
wrong!

These are all very common issues that I see in clients when they
first start training programs with us a Vision Personal
Training.

In a lot of cases, these are the things that prevent people from
commencing a training program to begin with. Doctor's, Surgeons and
even Physical Therapists steer to the side of caution rather than
prevention.

However, what people don't know is that corrective strength
training can prevent these injuries from getting worse and in most
cases prevent orthopaedic surgery. (I personally like the idea of
less people paying for the fancy cars and houses of orthopaedic
surgeons. Buy nice things for yourself!)

Now that you don't have to pay thousands of hard earned dollars
on a surgery that you may not need, you can use that money to
invest into yourself.

Most joint injury caused from exercise can be attributed to poor
postural alignment or an instability of a person's core function at
its roots.

If you walk into a gym these days you will see an array of
stationary machine equipment built to hit specific muscles of your
body. Now unless you have a specific goal of being a body builder..
these machines will likely make your core lazy and body more injury
prone.

What is the core?

When people think of their own core, they automatically think of
how many abs that they have on their stomach… they think of endless
sit ups, crunches, prone holds, leg raises and the list goes on.
Trust me someone looking strong on the outside, does not mean
a strong inside and definitely doesn't mean that a person is out of
pain.

Although some of these exercises can use the core, it is usually
in a non-functional movement pattern. Core strength is not
just the mirror showing us our abs.. or lack of.

Core strength is our body' ability to maintain a strong posture
whist being able to do all of the things we need to in our daily
lives. This include things like, bending down to pick up shopping
bags, pushing a shopping trolley full of grocery's, picking up our
kids or chasing them when they run away, going for a run, doing up
our shoes and a vast array of other daily norms.

As you can likely now see, I don't know many situations in life
where we would be lying on our belly's in a prone hold position for
3-5minutes! Probably not the best use of your time.

Can you Squat, Push, Pull, Bend, Twist, Lunge and Run without
compromising a strength posture? That's where we need to start!

This is the foundation of a strong and healthy core, not how
many sit ups you can do in a row.

For the analytically minded, these are most of the muscles that
make up a person's core.

Pelvic floor

Transversus Abdominis

Multifidus

Internal Obliques

External Obliques

Erector Spinae

Diaphragm

How do I make my core strong?

There are steps in building a strong core.

Step 1 - Postural correction

Step 2 - Activation

Step 3 - Activation whist movement

Postural Correction

This stage is the stage often missed by people commencing their
exercise programs. It is near impossible to build a strong core if
your body is too tight, too loose and out of balance.

You will need to go to a professional to be able to see how you
are doing posture wise.

To progress to the next stage, you must have trained your body
into a strong postural position. This way you have activated your
core and are protecting all of the vulnerable areas along your
spine.

This above image shows the strong alignment on the left hand
side and common alignments in need of corrective exercise
programs.

Once you can get yourself into the ideal alignment you can then
progress into the activation stage.

Activation

This is the stage where you are teaching your body to activate
your core muscles and keep activated under load in controlled
movement patterns.

Now that you have the posture, we need to learn how to keep that
posture during loaded exercise. This is in where we use 'big bang'
exercises, where multiple joints are moving at the same time.

All exercise in this phase is static, meaning you will be
standing in the same position during the exercises with no
impact.

Tip: When activating your core, think, 'Draw my belly button
towards my spine'. You should feel it turn on and if you
don't, then go and seek advice from a professional.

Activation whilst movement

This is the stage where majority of people start. It is the
stage where most injuries occur, as the proper steps were not taken
in the postural correction and activation stages.

This is where you are maintaining your strong postural position
whist moving in non-stable positions. Position's that are not
static.

You can run, jump, move side to side, stand on your hands, play
sports, do strength and conditioning and all sorts of other amazing
things. You get to pick any exercise that you love doing because
you have built such a strong base. Your body now has the
foundation for you to build any structure on it! You can pick your
goal and build your strength to achieve it.

Exceptions

There are some times and instances in females that can affect
core and stability.

Pregnancy and post

Ovulation

During a period

Menopause

During these times I would encourage female to go easy on
themselves. You already have a lot to deal with and you will be
experiencing pain both emotionally and physically, whist hormones
take control. This is where I would utilise seated machine training
to give your core a break.

Now that you know the myths about core training let's get to
building your base foundation and be able to live pain free, injury
free and live a life without restrictions!